Humanity
by Fleetingdejavu
Summary: The Games didn't end for Katniss, not for years after the Revolution. She was still trapped, lost in a web of perceived duty and guilt. When it all is finally stripped away, she realizes she can never be the person she once was. Something that Gale had known all along.


I still came to our old meeting place every Sunday. A thermos of tea, my bow, the soft leather boots rather than the manufactured shoes that were available now, my father's hunting jacket… Not that I thought Gale would come, even if he wasn't half a continent away. I told myself that I came because of the peace and quiet. Or for tradition. Or so that I wouldn't forget where it all started. Or because if I didn't then I might just forget who I am. But they were all lies. I kept coming to the meeting place because I couldn't let it go. What exactly _it_ was I very carefully never asked myself. I thought perhaps it was one of those things that I was better off not knowing.

I'd gotten very good not asking myself certain things in the last ten years. At first it was because certain questions triggered the memories. The nightmares. As a year passed, then a second, a third and a fourth… the questions started triggering a deep rage, violent and burning. Peeta had told me once that his Tracker Jacker fueled outbursts felt like being trapped inside of a nightmare, watching his own body, emotions, and mind being controlled by a maniac. By somebody else. That's how he had been able to finally stop them, he stopped letting the maniac take over.

My rage was more dangerous. Much more dangerous. Because I never once felt like somebody else was taking control of my actions. It felt like I was allowing the truth to be set free. Allowing myself to actually be the broken little psychopath that had been made by Snow, Coin, Plutarch, Haymitch, the Gamemakers, the Capitol, District 13… that particular list could go on forever if I let it. When the rage came I would take to the woods. Days, weeks, months at a time. It was better that way. Because I spent all my time imagining how I would torture and kill everyone who had ever had a hand in causing me pain. Not even my loved ones were spared from these detailed plots. Not my father, not Peeta, not mother, not even Prim…

They made me this. This… Mutt. They all did, even though only a few of them did it consciously. I guess Snow won in the end after all. The Hunger Games broke something deep inside of me that will never be healed. Just like they did in Annie. And Haymitch. And Joanna. We all found ways to function in society at least some of the time. Peeta was still the best of all of us, in every way. I may have been the Mockingjay once, the spark that lit the wildfire of the revolution, but Peeta was the gentle rain that washed away the sins we had all committed and brought the land back to life. Maybe he could have brought me back to life too, if there had been anything left to bring back. I didn't want to believe it at first, I didn't want to believe it for years, but I was consumed in that wildfire.

They never tried to put me on camera again. They never took me on tours across the new country to see how it was being rebuilt. I had been used in full, my purpose completed, and it was decided that it would be better for the fragile fledgling nation if I quietly faded into the background, and then from sight altogether. Because once the Rebels had won, and the new government put into place, people started going home to rebuild, and that was when they fully realized just how much this war had cost them. Fathers, sons, mothers, sisters, friends… you don't treat a wound with fire, you sooth it with water. You wash it. It was the first thing my mother taught me.

I had been the face of the revolution, and Peeta became the face of the future. He toured the nation, he met with new mayors, he helped raise new barns, he did interviews, he had ideas for rebuilding, he worked with the new leaders to establish new laws… and there was nobody in the world who could have done what he did as well as he did.

He spent the first six months insisting that I be included in everything. I was the Mockingjay after all. He fought for my presence in every meeting, and when it was allowed I thanked him by sitting in silence. By showing up an hour late. By not showing up at all. He spent the next six months trying to convince me to care about the rebuilding, to get me to want to go to all the meetings and press conferences with him. When he realized it was never going to happen, he tried to break ties with the new government and stay in the new town that was growing where District 12 had once been. He tried to stay with me, to bake bread and paint and be content simply watching the news. I tried to teach him to hunt, but he never did learn to walk quietly. He held me when the nightmares woke me at night. We talked of marriage, a true marriage this time, we started to build a life together from the shattered rubble of the last three years.

But it turns out, when you aren't in the arena, it's much harder sacrifice everything for another person. I was the one who had to point it out to Peeta, because he didn't want to see it. But he was more in love with the fledgling government, with the noble cause of rebuilding, of the endless possibilities of the future, than he was with me. I didn't blame him, after everything I had put him through it was actually a relief that he did, in fact, have a world without me.

It took a few months, but I convinced him to start going on the tours again. We weren't ending, I reassured him, I'd be waiting for him at the end of every tour. He needn't be gone much, maybe one week every two months. But the people needed him. They needed his goodness to remind them what they had fought for, and what needed to be preserved for every generation to follow us. It took reminding him of how Coin had wanted to reinstate the Hunger Games, even just one more time, before he agreed to go.

I kept good on my promise. I was waiting for him every time he came home, but I also encouraged him to go more and more often, and for longer periods of time. It happened slowly, just as I had planned it to, but within a year he was spending more time in the new Capitol than he was in the old District 12. And he was slowly, painlessly, falling out of love with me. Before the hijacking I don't know if my plan would have worked. The selfish part of myself hoped it wouldn't have, but it didn't matter. Snow had distorted every memory and feeling he had for me, and he had done his best to rebuild them, but once a dish is shattered the cracks are still there, and it is never as strong as it once was again. Yes, I was still protecting him, just like in the games. I had never stopped. But I was all that was left to be protected against now.

A year later he started trying to convince me to move to the Capitol with him, but his attempts were halfhearted at best. He knew I would never go, and at that point he wasn't entirely sure if he wanted me to or not. On his last day in town I took him to my father's lake for a picnic, and I lay with my head in his lap making a crown of flowers, just as I had that day a lifetime ago before the Quarter Quell… only this time there was no terror, no hopelessness, no pain underlying it all. It was peaceful, hopeful, beautiful. Feelings that I suspected I would never feel again.

As I watched his train pull away I felt something inside me… change. Shift. Melt? Break? I didn't know how to describe it, or what it meant. I took a step and the feeling grew. I took a deep breath and it grew even more. It wasn't unpleasant nor pleasant, not painful or soothing, it was just different. I made my way slowly back to the house, poking and prodding the feeling mentally, trying to find its boundaries, its cause, its meaning, anything.

I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night with the knowledge of what it was. It was freedom. I was finally free of the Games. I had never stopped playing, not since Prim was called and I rushed up on stage, volunteering to take her place. I was free… and I was broken. The pieces of knowledge came as a pair. I couldn't have one without the other. I was finally done with the Game, but they had won because I was irreparably broken. I didn't know how yet, but I knew without a doubt that I was.

Gale would know. The thought came to me unbidden, and sent a shudder through me. I had not allowed myself to think of Gale since I had been returned home with Haymitch. It had been a survival technique, and I had needed it at the time. I didn't think of him, I didn't ask about him, I told Peeta and Haymitch never to mention him… had it been because some part of me knew that I was still playing the game, and broken people don't survive the game? Gale knew me better than I knew myself, he would have seen that a part of me wasn't going to heal. On some level I must have known that in order to protect Peeta, I had to protect myself from that knowledge, which had meant cutting Gale from my life, my thoughts, my heart. I didn't even know where he lived now…

But Haymitch did. They still talked, I knew. Which meant he would have his telephone number… methodically I got dressed and walked across the street in darkness to the shining lights that belonged to Haymitch's kitchen. Every six months or so he would attempt to get sober, he would clean up his house and take up some sort of useful practice to fill his days, he would shower and change his clothes and eat… this was not one of those times. I was glad to find him awake though, rather than passed out, and when I asked him for Gale's number he gave me a long look before gesturing to an array of papers taped to the wall around the telephone. He knew Peeta had left only a few hours ago and I was sure he was judging me for how quickly I was leaving him behind, but I didn't understand what was happening within me well enough to try to explain it to him yet. When I found the slip of paper with Gale scrawled across it I pulled it from the wall and left the house without another word. Tomorrow. I would return and explain everything tomorrow.

I sat in front of my phone staring at the piece of paper until the numbers began to blur and swim before my eyes. I wasn't sure what was causing me to hesitate, whether it was apprehension of talking to Gale again after so long or if it was fear of the truths he was sure to reveal to me about myself. At that thought I let out a strangled laugh. I had survived the Hunger Games, the Quarter Quell, the Revolution, the blood the fighting the pain… and here I was safe in my house and afraid to pick up my phone.

I faintly noted that my fingers were shaking as I dialed, but I ignored it. I sat listening to the steady ring for several minutes before I remembered that it was the middle of the night, but before I could put the phone back in its cradle the ringing stopped and a soft, sleep filled voice murmured hello. A woman's voice.

"I need to speak with Gale." I didn't even bother trying to lie to myself. It wasn't a wrong number. Gale had a woman in his house, in the middle of the night. A woman who felt at home enough to answer his phone. And why shouldn't he? I had no claim on him, never had…

"He's asleep, who is this?" It might have been easier to hate her if she was rude. After all, I'd woke her up in the middle of the night and was now demanding to talk to Gale, and not very politely either. But she sounded kind, sweet even. Her voice held no malice at all.

"Katniss."

"Who?" It took a moment for me to find my voice after that. She didn't even know who I am? Maybe she had just entered Gale's life, maybe he hadn't talked about that part of his past yet…

"Please, it's important." She made a compassionate sound, and I wondered if my voice had sounded pathetic enough to warrant it. Probably.

The phone was silent for a couple of minutes, and I found myself biting my nails. That was something I hadn't done since the Revolution ended…

"I've been waiting for a long time Catnip." I took a moment to let his voice wash over me, soak into me, to remind me of things that I had thought I had lost long ago.

"I know." I didn't apologize. I had been protecting Peeta, he knew it as well as I did. There was a long pause, and then the words spilled from my mouth before I could stop them. "Who answered the phone?"

"Anita." He wasn't going to make this easy.

"She sounds nice. Pretty."

"And just how does somebody sound pretty?" The teasing edge was back in his voice, the one I had missed so desperately.

"I just meant…" He cut me off before I could say anything else though.

"She's my fiancé." Was it possible to forget how to breath? Because I couldn't seem to make even my lungs work, much less anything else. I could suddenly feel very clearly the way my fingers were clenched around the phone, the way my arm was pressing it against my ear. For a moment I felt caught in one of Gale's snares, forced to sit and hear him say fiancé over and over again, with no way to escape…

"Katniss-" His words break the spell I'm under and once again my mouth takes control rather than my brain.

"She didn't even know who I was." It's not until the words are out that I can feel the pain that drove them. Had I become so unimportant to him, so much a part of his past, that he didn't even feel the need to tell her about me? I suddenly thought of the time when I had asked him who the other girls he had kissed were, and he shrugged them off as if they had never meant anything to him at all. Had I joined their ranks?

"You aren't the only one who can cut somebody out of their life." To protect themselves. The unsaid words rang in my ears, and I wondered if they were as true for him as they were for me. This conversation had taken a painful turn I had never expected, and I wanted nothing more than to end it, or to go back in time and never make it at all. But I had a purpose, and the sooner it was done the sooner I could slink away and nurse my new wounds.

"Peeta moved to the Capitol today. As I watched the train pull away, I realized that I had never stopped playing the games. Until now. I'm free Gale. I'm finally free." It ended in a whisper, as if I feared to scare the truth away if I proclaimed it too loudly. He seemed to take my cue about ignoring everything we had said before this, and I could hear his smile on the other end of the line.

"It's about damn time. And what will you do, with your newfound freedom? Take up sewing?" How long had it been since I had been able to laugh with Gale like this?

"I think I'll probably go hunting. I never was much good with a needle, your neck is proof of that." We both laughed at that, the scares he bore from my hasty attempt to stop his bleeding would never fade. "I still go to our place, every Sunday." That I hadn't intended to say. Maybe I should have waited a few days to have this conversation, I could have planned it better.

Before he had a chance to respond I ploughed on, wanting to be done with this more desperately than before.

"The Games broke something in me Gale, but I don't know what. I didn't even know it was broken until Peeta left, and I realized I didn't I have to keep playing."

"I know they did." I had never heard such rage and sadness in his voice before, and I knew I had been right, that he was the only person who could help me understand.

"What is it? What did they break?"

"Don't make me say it Catniss." Ah. So it was going to be something terrible then. Something that I was probably better off not knowing. Wasn't there some saying, curiosity killed the cat?

"Please." There was a long pause, and this time I recognized an emotion in his voice that I had never heard from him before. Not from Gale, who was a fighter, who never gave up. I heard despair as he uttered the two words that would shatter my walls of self delusion forever.

"Your humanity."

A/N: Almost a year ago I wrote this while I was volunteering in Costa Rica, with no internet access. Then I forgot about it until I stumbled across it earlier today :) I don't know where it's going, or if it's going anywhere, but it demanded to be written.


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